


and still i try

by betp



Series: From Tumblr [13]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Eating, Insomnia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 21:37:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6441787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betp/pseuds/betp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being up all night and asleep all day isn’t as great as it sounds.</p><p>For one, Stiles still has to do things during the day. For another, it’s driving him completely batshit. The only reason he’s sane, he thinks, is because he keeps running into Derek Fucking Hale in random places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and still i try

“Nice pajamas,” says someone drily just over Stiles’ shoulder, and it’s because he’s suddenly, uncharacteristically been blessed by the gods of grace that he doesn’t jump straight through the ceiling. It’s not a jump. It’s more of a jolt. He jolts a little. Then he just turns his head, looks balefully at Derek. Derek looks soft, rumpled at the edges. He’s wearing sneakers. “What’re you doing at the grocery store at one in the morning,” he asks Stiles. Then he steps up to the self checkout station next to Stiles’. He’s holding a shopping basket. It’s probably the funniest thing Stiles has ever seen Derek do.

“What’re _you_ doing at the grocery store at one in the morning,” says Stiles. It’s supposed to be mocking, but Derek holds up the box in his hands. Stiles obligingly squints to read it. He grimaces, but it’s an approving grimace. A relatable grimace. “Organic masala burgers,” he says, nodding. That sounds good, actually. Derek bloops the box and drops it into a bag. “Werewolves get midnight cravings?”

Derek shrugs one shoulder. A sort of _maybe we do, maybe we don’t, but we probably do_. “You?”

Stiles proudly reveals his purchases. “Frozen taquitos,” he narrates for Derek.

“And grapes,” says Derek. “Odd combo.”

“I’m a man who knows what he likes.” Stiles fumbles the taquito box. It crashes onto his Green Lantern slipper.

“Place the item in the bagging area,” says the machine. Then, almost immediately, “An attendant has been notified to assist you.”

Stiles places the item in the bagging area. Then he looks back over at Derek, unable, it seems, to ignore him. The slightly dated pop music that’s playing in the grocery store comes off as very lonely, in the night like this. He comes here once or twice a week around this time, grab a bottle of soda and some brand of cookies he remembers having in his packed lunch in second grade, and it always feels like he’s in purgatory. The presence of another person that Stiles can speak to just obliterates that feeling of isolation, or being lost—he latches onto it sort of desperately, watches Derek slowly scan his other item. Swallowing, he tries, “Is that sparkling water?”

“Lemon.”

“Nice.” They both look at each other for a minute, contemplative. Stiles doesn’t know what Derek is thinking about, but he gets the feeling it mirrors Stiles’ own thoughts: he wants a masala burger. He wants a glass of sparkling lemon water. He _also_ wants taquitos and grapes. He wants all of those things, someplace warm, with someone to distract him from his jittering thoughts—or, more likely, in Derek’s case, to just sit there and remind him he’s not a haunting. He narrows his eyes a little, cocks an eyebrow. Derek’s eyebrows also do a thing, and he glances over at his checkout screen. Then they’re in agreement. “D'you have buns for those?” Stiles wonders, peering over his shoulder toward the deli.

“Oh. No. I forgot.” Derek considers this. Then he says, “Grab me some of that canned tea while you’re over there.” Oh, that sounds _awesome_.

“Swipe your card, and follow the instructions on the pinpad,” says the machine.

>

“Do you do this a lot?” Derek wonders, two nights later.

This time Stiles does jump, and it hurts because he’s sitting at a booth in an IHOP. “Jesus,” he hisses, rubbing at his throbbing kneecap. “What the fuck? _Again_? Did you _follow_ me here?”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I did. I’ve been worried about you.”

“Really?”

“No.”

Stiles glowers for a second. Then he impatiently flails a hand across the table. He snaps, “ _Well_?” Derek sits; he’s got a book in his hand, something thick and with a cover on it, a greyscale photo of the author on the back. The cover’s a little weathered, warped. He sets the book down on the table and pushes it over next to the syrups. “Yes,” Stiles adds. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Derek says. “Did you already order?”

“No.”

“Good.” He takes the menu from Stiles, looks at it weird. Like it’s a labyrinth, and he finds mazes boring. Stiles half expects him to turn the thing sideways and adjust his monocle at it. _God_ , Stiles is tired. He scrubs a whole hand down his face. “If you get waffles, I’ll get pancakes,” he offers, eyes shut, one hand flopped outward.

“Hm. Fine.” Derek drops the menu onto the table. “I’ll get sausage.”

“Cool. I’m getting bacon.”

It’s not discussed, but Derek gets his eggs over easy and Stiles gets his scrambled. He thinks, cramming his mouth full of pancake and pork and embryos, that this is the start of a beautiful tradition. Wherein he gets to eat everything he wants to, always, with the relatively affordable price of being irritated and ignored for a few hours, plus thirteen seventy-eight.

Over subpar coffee, Derek tells Stiles about the book. He gets worked up over a missed plotpoint, and Stiles watches him, oddly interested.

<

“I had the dream again,” Stiles tells Derek. Derek passes him an eggroll. “Thanks.”

“Which one. The one in the ocean?”

“Yeah.” In it, he’s in a vast ocean, bright cerulean, looking up and to the side. The sun is breaking through the water in beams, the water moving and shimmering and perfectly clear. He doesn’t seem to be moving, in the water, and he knows he couldn’t get to the surface if he wanted to. Not in time. However, he’s discovered that if he blows into his cupped hands and makes an air pocket, like when you push a bowl facedown under water, he can just breathe _that_ air—as long as his breaths are really quick and shallow. Because that’s how _science_ works. “What d'you think it means?”

Derek takes a bite of lo mein. He says with his cheek bulged full of noodles, hunting for another bean sprout, “I think it means you have mild sleep apnea.”

Stiles sighs. “You have no sense of mysticism.” This is a conversation they’ve had before. Derek thinks dream interpretation is bunk. They talk about it every time Stiles has a weird dream.

“I’m sorry I don’t put any stock in divining meaning from your brain deconstructing your day through nonsense images,” drawls Derek.

“Sure, this is really insightful, coming from the dude who never remembers his dreams.” Stiles figures he’ll eventually get tired of having this conversation. Not yet, though. “It’s gotta mean _something_. I keep having it. Like, if it was just, you know, like—external stimuli influencing me, why would the _‘images’_ stay the same?”

“How long have you been having it.”

“I first had it when I was seven.”

Derek frowns. He takes back the half-eaten eggroll he’d given to Stiles a minute ago. Why that one? Why not one of the others in the box? What an idiot. “Is that normal?” Derek wonders. “The same dream since you were a kid?”

“Who knows? Gimme an orange chicken.”

Derek double takes between the chicken and Stiles. “Like, the whole _thing_ , or just one piece—”

“ _An_ orange chicken. Give me one orange chicken.”

Derek rolls his eyes, but he plucks a single orange chicken nugget out of the mess of coconut, and holds it out. Stiles chomps it right off Derek’s chopsticks.

>

“But I thought you guys—you and she were like, _you_ know—”

“That’s the thing,” sighs Derek, exasperated, “we _were_. Until we weren’t.”

Stiles knows what that’s like. He knows it so well his throat clenches up for a second, and he looks down at his okra to keep from looking at Derek. “I, um—” Stiles clears his throat. “I take it it didn’t end well?” He looks back up at Derek, preemptively wincing a little.

Derek glares upwards: not quite an eyeroll, because his frustration isn’t aimed at Stiles, for once. Then he deflates. “I don’t know,” he says.

“You don’t _know_.”

“No. I really don’t.” He takes the plate of fried chicken Stiles is proffering, and then holds it pointlessly. “This would be the first relationship I’ve ever had,” Derek tells him, “that ended because of normal relationship things, and not because somebody died horrifically.”

Stiles can’t help it: he snorts. Then he presses the back of his hand against his mouth. “Sorry,” he says. Derek doesn’t look mad. “I guess nonviolent breakups have a learning curve,” Stiles offers, wholly unable to wipe the smirk off his face.

“You’d know,” says Derek, and _ouch_.

“ _Wow_. Seriously? I _said_ I was sorry.”

Derek takes a reflective bite of mashed potatoes. “I would have said that whether or not you’d laughed at my trauma,” he decides, and Stiles cackles so hard he almost upends the green beans.

<

Being up all night and asleep all day isn’t as great as it sounds.

For one, Stiles still has to do things during the day. For another, it’s driving him completely batshit. The only reason he’s sane, he thinks, is because he keeps running into Derek Fucking Hale in random places. He’s not sure why. He’s pretty sure Derek’s not tailing him. He doesn’t know whether he’d mind Derek tailing him.

Stiles stays up all night because he can’t close his eyes at night. The only time he feels safe enough to sleep is during the day. It’s the sunlight. Turning on all the lights in his room doesn’t help at all; it’s not the same as sunlight.

He bought one of those sun lamps, but it just depresses him. He leaves it in the corner next to his bookcase, unplugged.

Sometimes Stiles tries to sleep at night, but it rarely works. Tonight, after an hour and a half of lying stock still in bed, he rolls over and grabs his phone. 3:21. Sighing, he types up a text message to Derek: **You wanna go to Evgeni’s? I’m not even hungry, but I can’t stop thinking about kalduny.**

And it’s weird. The longer they do this, the more and less Derek seems like an enigma. Stiles starts memorizing little things about him, like the way his face looks when he’s just read that there’s gelatin in something that he thinks shouldn’t have gelatin in it, or what his middle name is, or that his idea of hot chocolate is super thick and bitter, and he thinks you’re supposed to dip churros in it. At the same time, he’s still Derek Fucking Hale. He’s still just… weird. He’s intense and has a short temper, and he’s simultaneously one of the most gentle people Stiles has ever met. And that doesn’t _compute_. 

That doesn’t make _sense_. They should cancel each other _out_. But they don’t. They just combine and make something new. Like sodium and chlorine. Like chemistry. 

> 

“Because he’s mad at me,” Stiles is telling Derek. “I’m not _used_ to him being mad at me.”

“Why.” Derek’s got a forearm draped across his eyes, and he’s lounging on the floor. One: Stiles has never seen him on the floor of anywhere unless he was in mortal peril. Two: it’s unfair that he gets to look like some kind of ridiculous ad for jeans even with powdered sugar all over his fingers.

Speaking of which, Stiles sucks powdered sugar off his own fingers. “Why is he _mad_ at me, or why am I not used to it.”

Derek huffs a little, but otherwise does not move. “Both.”

Stiles wonders if Derek has to _try_ to look like that, or if it’s some kind of stupid Hale gene. “He’s _never_ mad at me,” Stiles urges. “Which—I have people mad at me _constantly_. All right? I fuck up right and _left_. You know? I’m like a fuck-up _commando_.”

Derek finally takes his arm off his eyes, looks at him, like he’s not sure whether to be unimpressed or not. He splits the difference and says, “Gimme a cupcake.”

“Pumpkin spice or chocolate?”

“Funfetti.”

“We are out of funfetti.”

“What?”

“You ate the last one during the podcast.”

Derek looks shellshocked. “Fine,” he says then. “Pumpkin.” Stiles delivers him one. “What does he do when you fuck up, then?”

“He’s super forgiving as long as I apologize.” Stiles eats another brownie bite. “But—unm—” He has to actually chew for a second. “I think, I feel like I fucked up too big this time.”

“You could _apologize_ to her,” suggests Derek irritably.

“But—no, it goes _beyond_ that,” Stiles insists. “Because at first I was trying to explain myself, and then the fight sort of became less about my insensitivity and more about how I never feel bad for shit until he’s pissed. Y'know? I think he’s finally starting to realize that he’s, like, my _entire moral compass_.”

“So you should apologize because you insulted her,” Derek recaps. “But you missed your _apology window_ , and now if you apologize, it’ll be for the wrong reasons.”

“Exactly.”

“Mm.” Derek sucks some frosting off his thumb. It’s a little sensual. There’s some sensuality. “You know,” he adds, thoughtful, “ _that’s_ what I never got about somebody _making you apologize_ for things. It’s just—it’s a humiliation ritual.” He sits up, looks sharply at Stiles. “It doesn’t actually say anything about you regretting your actions.”

“Usually my apologies are, like,” Stiles gestures emptily, like Hamlet about to angst, “ _now that you’re upset, I’m sorry you’re upset at me_.”

“Right.”

“I mean, I do shit for _reasons_. All right? I don’t just _try_ to insult people.”

“Sure. It comes naturally.”

“All right, Jerry Seinfeld.” Stiles had a dream about that wry grin of Derek’s once. Or twice. “I just, I don’t know what to do.”

“I think you should apologize,” Derek tells him. Stiles opens his mouth, but Derek waves whatever he’s about to say away. “I think you should apologize,” he says again, “ _directly_ to Lydia. And then not say anything about it to Scott.”

Stiles almost drops a candy cane. “But—why?”

Derek shrugs. “If he thinks you only apologize to appease him, then make an apology that doesn’t include him whatsoever.”

Somehow, Stiles thinks, pouting a little, that seems like the opposite of what Scott wants from him. In fact, when you put that much thought into it, it seems almost manipulative. Stiles could also be putting too much thought into putting thought into it. But the bottom line is that Derek’s advice fits the hole left by the fuckup. It’s a little bit, just a little bit, like duct tape over a leak, but it’s better than the whole pipe falling apart and spewing sewage everywhere. It’ll work. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll try—I’ll try it. I’ll, I’m gonna.” He sits up on the couch, fumbles his phone out of his hoodie pocket. “I should, should I call her?”

“I wouldn’t,” Derek says. As if reminded it exists, he removes his own phone from his pocket and places it pointlessly onto the coffee table. “It seems huge to you because it pissed Scott off, but on her end it was just a dick thing to say.”

“So I should…?

“You should text her a very unambiguous apology.”

“Sorry for the thing,” Stiles says.

“Sorry for the thing and here’s why the thing was bad,” explains Derek, with just a tinge of annoyance. Probably at Stiles’ terminology, which—it was very apt and he should get over himself.

The apology works like a charm, and having to word it so specifically actually makes Stiles truly feel sorry; he understands how he fucked up. Derek _gets_ things, sometimes. Not always! In fact, less often than he should. But he does get things—at least, he gets the things Stiles _doesn’t_ get.

Stiles likes that.

<

“God, I can’t believe you found this,” gushes Stiles, digging giddily into his first crunchy taco of the night. The place is mostly empty; there’s a group of exhausted twenty-something girls eating their drunk away, and then on the opposite end of the restaurant, Stiles and Derek are tucked behind a small partition with parrots painted on it. There’s a potted fern on top of the little wall, and with its burst of foliage, the table’s almost secluded. “How’d you do it?”

“It’s sort of obscure,” Derek tells him. “I did this thing where I pointed my eyeballs around and used vision to gather information—”

“Jesus’s _balls_ ,” Stiles says irritably; “just say you _saw_ it, for _fuck’s sake_ —”

“Well, how else would I—”

“You could have googled it?” Stiles forcefully scoops up all of Derek’s sour cream and transfers it onto his own enchilada. “You could have heard about it from Boyd or somebody?” Boyd eats out a lot; he’s in the early stages of a relationship right now. You know how it is. “You could have come in here looking for a bathroom and then stopped for a sopapilla?”

“All right, stop,” Derek grouses, waving a loose-wristed hand toward him. Stiles elbows him; he elbows back, harder. “Don’t you have class at like eight tomorrow?”

“Close,” says Stiles, “ten. And no, that’s Tuesday-Thursday. Tomorrow’s my day off.”

“Gimme your guac.”

Stiles just rotates his plate one-eighty so Derek can take however much he wants. “Besides,” Stiles goes on. “It’s not like I can just put my insomnia on do-not-disturb because I have school, genius.”

“Did I _say_ anything about your sleep patterns?” Derek grumbles. “Have I ever?”

Stiles thinks he has. Maybe once or twice. “So I’m defensive,” Stiles says. “What’s your point?”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Tell me about your paper. You have a term paper, right?”

“Star Wars,” Stiles says, smirking at him. Derek raises one eyebrow, and Stiles is excited. He tried to explain the thing to Scott, and Scott just sort of smiled until he stopped. It’s not because he’s never seen them now; he watched a couple of them after the newest ones came out. It’s just that he only really half cares. He cares about them as much as he cares about Jeopardy. “I’m trying to make a comparison between us—I-I mean, _Americans_ —” Awkward. “—and the conflict of the Empire. You know?” Derek sips his soda. “Like, in episode three, Palpatine says that shit about safety and security, and Padme’s all like, that’s how liberty dies, everybody applauds, or whatever. And it’s like the shit people argue about now. You know? Where’s the line?” Derek makes a sort of face of doting concession. “Okay, it makes more sense in my paper. I don’t have,” Stiles reaches for a chip, and then sets it back down. His heart’s still pounding from saying ‘us’ a second ago. “I don’t have my sources, I don't—my notes,” but Derek just laughs a little and takes the chip Stiles abandoned. Stiles watches him dip it in sour cream. Derek fucking loves toppings. Stiles is pretty sure Derek eats so many chips and crackers because they’re mere vehicles for toppings. “I’m gonna fail.”

“If you do,” shrugs Derek, “at least you’ll have written a term paper about fucking Star Wars.”

“Next semester, come hell or high water, I’m gonna find a way to do one about Twilight,” Stiles tells him passionately, and Derek genuinely grins at him, which—holy _crap_.

>

There’s no schedule to it. They never even discuss it. Stiles just expects Derek to meet him places, and Derek seems to expect Stiles to meet him places, and that’s it. That’s just _it_.

Sometimes it happens by accident—like the three different times Stiles walked into the 24-hour KFC off 20th and found Derek already in there, peeling his biscuits apart for no reason. Other times, he’ll roll furiously over in bed in the wee hours and find a text from two minutes prior: **They sell your weird snapple at the Walgreens come here**

It was obvious to Stiles ten minutes into the fourth time they met up that it had stopped being about convenience or loneliness. At least, it had for Stiles. For Stiles, it had become a weird, unexpected friendship built on a scaffolding of entitlement, bluntness, and impulse decisions. He doesn’t dare let himself count on it, but he does think he’s starting to expect it a little bit. 

It’s making nights easier to handle. To grasp, even. 

He hopes against hope it’s the same for Derek. He hopes it so hard it aches in his chest like a blood clot or a heart attack or a stab wound. Sometimes, on nights when he doesn’t meet up with Derek, he stops out in a frigid parking lot and looks up at the night sky and wishes idiotically on stars. 

He always used to wish for good luck, or to get at least a 7 on his AP US final, or for a sudden windfall in his bank account. Now he’s wishing for something different. Something wordless. Just a feeling that he projects desperately into the stupid, unfeeling sky. 

<

Stiles grabs a careless handful of the plastic package of toilet paper and hurls the whole production diagonally into the cart. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” he’s wondering irritably. “That’s just—that’s ab _surd_. Why?”

“Because.” Derek grabs the toilet paper, aggressively rights it so it sits straight in the basket. Gives him a look, like, _seriously?_ Stiles just shrugs, so he places a roll of paper towels in next to it. Like, a _single_ one.

“Why would you only get _one_?” Stiles demands of him. “You’re gonna use that up in like thirty seconds, and then you’re gonna be like, _oh, bluh, let’s get paper towels, but only the choose-a-size kind_ —”

“ _Stiles_ ,” interrupts Derek; Stiles falls seethingly quiet, looks away so that he doesn’t stare daggers into Derek’s stupid fucking face. “I’m not spending twenty bucks on paper towels. If you just avoid pouring an entire bottle of Dr Pepper onto the floor this ti—”

“I _didn’t pour_ —whatever.”

“You _did_ —”

“ _Whatever_ , I said.” Derek looks at him a long, annoyed moment, in which Stiles removes the roll of paper towels from the cart, launches it on top of a shelf of flour, and selects a pack of twelve. He jams it into the empty child seat sideways. “You never answered my question, you know.”

Derek says, “Put it back.”

“No.”

“Stiles.”

“ _Shut_ it. You never _answereduh_ my _questionuh_.” He whacks the sentence out in Morse code on the paper towels, for emphasis. Derek raises an imperceptible brow at this, and then chooses to ignore it.

“Fine.” Derek stops to stare at the nut department. He looks somehow simultaneously absorbed in this and bored by it. He also looks like some kind of bizarre, Swedish ad for pistachios. _Dessa muttrar_. “What was the question?”

“M'kay, Lucy Whitmore,” says Stiles. “Talking to you is so _stimulating_ , I just—o _kay_ , _chill_. Damn. My _question_ —are you listening?”

“Stiles, I swear to god…”

“I’m _just making sure_. My question was why you did not _tell_ me it was your _birthday_.” He wedges himself between Derek and the many pegs of bagged nuts. For a second it seems like Derek’s gonna stare pissily above Stiles’ head in lieu of actually making eye contact, but then he folds his arms, looks at Stiles, and _wow_ , they’re really close. They’re really _really_ close. Stiles wants to back up, but there’s nuts behind him. “Um, it just—” He sighs, looks down. Their toes are almost overlapping. This is a really awkward place to stand. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve seen you four times a week for the last, like, three months, or anything.”

“It’s weird,” Derek finally admits. Then he steps back, thank god. Oddly enough, Stiles follows him. He’d gotten used to the close quarters in the last fifteen seconds. “I only see you in the middle of the night. It seemed—” He searches for words. “—taboo to acknowledge it in daytime.”

“There’s a weird word,” Stiles points out. They have a list of weird words. The nebulous plan is to eventually google the etymology of each of them. They haven’t gotten around to it yet. “Taboo.” Derek nods soberly. It’s on the list. “Umm. If I was awake in the daytime. And you, um, wanted to acknowledge me. I’d be… cool with that.”

“Yeah?” asks Derek, amused. “You’d be cool?”

“Yeah. Yes.” Stiles licks his lips, self-consciously, and feels himself go obscenely hot behind the ears when he realizes Derek watched him do that. “Uh, what do you want for your birthday?”

“Aside from a good night’s sleep?” asks Derek. Stiles sort of exhales a laugh, and stares at him. He’s acting super weird, and he can’t stop. It’s humiliating.

“Seriously,” says Stiles. “You’re, like, rich. I have no idea what you get a rich dude who doesn’t give a shit about owning things for his birthday.”

“You could make me something,” proposes Derek. “A… gingerbread house or something.”

“That’s a great idea,” Stiles tells him dully. “My skills at edible buildings are well known.”

“Fine.”

“Mm.”

“Then I have one other suggestion.”

Derek puts his hands, flat and hot and assuming, onto Stiles’ sides; Stiles blushes so hard he feels his face actually _throb_. “Um, what.”

He’s somehow ended up between Derek and the cart handle, which is odd and embarrassing, and it’s also how he comes to kiss Derek Hale for the first time in a 24-hour Walgreens at two-sixteen in the morning. He doesn’t think he’s ever kissed anyone this passionately in his life. There’s an exhausted store associate scanning price tags like six feet away that probably knows Stiles’ knees went weak.

Finally, after what feels like fifteen seconds or a year, Derek pulls back and looks, heavy-lidded, at Stiles. 

“I’m not spending twenty bucks on paper towels,” he tells Stiles again. 

“It’s the quicker picker upper,” Stiles replies. 

>

“We should become diurnal again,” Stiles tells Derek. “Y'know? Join society. Come out into the sun.”

“If you want to come out,” Derek replies, “then by all means…”

“Shut up. You _know_ —hey.” Derek looks at him, unimpressed. “You _know_ what I meant. Stop it.”

“Stop what.”

“I’m trying to _better_ our _lives_!” Stiles whines, nevertheless letting Derek finger him again. He’s still wet, fucked just half an hour ago. At least they’re finally doing something at night that’s _supposed_ to be done at night. “Ungh. Skip it, skip it, gimme the D.”

“ _The D_?” repeats Derek, astounded.

“Go on the internet sometime,” snaps Stiles. “Fast forward to fucking me! Chop-chop, chop squared! Let’s go! Let’s _go_ , let’s get to the fucking, let’s, _ohhh_ —”

“You’d think your mouth was down here,” Derek comments, “seeing as you never shut up unless I’m doing this.”

“Is that why you like topping so much?” Stiles asks him breathlessly. “Because I, uh. Mm, okay.”

“It’s a benefit,” Derek admits, and when Stiles looks over his shoulder, Derek is smirking. He’s fucking beautiful. “Can you—hang on.” Derek grabs Stiles’ hips, jerks them up so Stiles is, like, presenting his ass. It’s a _little_ embarrassing, but it’s pretty easy to ignore embarrassment when Derek’s dick is doing the thing in the place. “ _Yeah_.”

Agreed. _Cosigned_. “Okay, give it to me.”

Stiles really does think they should eventually fix their sleeping patterns. It’ll, like, round up their whole getting-together story. You know? It’ll signify their growth or whatever. It’ll suggest their love healed their aching psyches. Or something. When Stiles eventually has to start telling, like, his cousins or whatever how he and Derek got together, it’ll be nice to have that little wrap-up at the end, so that he doesn’t have to be all like, “And then nothing, we kept staying up all night to avoid our nightmares, but now we make out a lot more and I get to do butt stuff.” Stiles clenches around Derek’s cock, just a little, and it makes both of them sort of sigh.

He explains his ideas to Derek, once he’s made Stiles come again, and Derek nods amiably. “Plus,” Stiles goes on, “we’ll probably get a lot more done.”

“Yeah,” says Derek.

“We could—” Stiles gestures. “You know. _See_ people. And it’s healthier.”

“Sure.”

Stiles rolls onto his side, looks at him and looks at him. Derek has a nice beard. The sun’s coming up behind Derek’s head, and Stiles is exhausted. “Tomorrow,” Stiles says, nudging clumsily over into Derek’s sweaty, sticky personal space. “We should—” He yawns. “We should start tomorrow.”

Sighing, Derek pulls Stiles close, pads of his fingers and palm of his hand dragging leisurely on Stiles’ skin. Stiles feels himself drifting ecstatically off to sleep.

Definitely, like, the day after tomorrow. They’ll totally start next week.

**Author's Note:**

> [I exist.](http://lavenderek.tumblr.com)


End file.
